A lot of meat-eaters fall back on the argument that if our bodies weren’t meant to eat meat, we wouldn’t be able to. But then, we are also able to eat and even digest cardboard. Does that mean that we should or that we are meant to eat cardboard? Strictly herbivorous animals like cows too can eat and digest meat but with terrible consequences—remember the Mad Cow Disease. So what we need to understand is whether human bodies are suited to eat meat or if it is both unnatural and dangerous for us to do so. Let’s examine the Physiological Facts. Our immediate animal ancestors, the apes, are primarily vegetarian. At most they might eat insects but they do not feed on other animals. Scientists, including Darwin, have established that early humans too from at least 4 million years ago ate exclusively plant-based diets. The races that followed, the hunter-gatherers as it were, had extremely short life expectancy limited to 25-30 years with infant mortality as high as 40-50%. The same pattern is true for those of these societies that have survived into the 21st century eg in the Arctic and in the jungles of South America & Africa, and they cannot be considered successful societies. Early man had to be vegetarian because his body was not designed to catch or eat animals. He had no claws, his teeth could not rend flesh, his mouth could not seriously wound or get a good bite into a struggling victim. He was not fast enough to catch prey nor had the reflexes to ambush or overpower an animal. Not much has changed. If anything our bodies are now even less equipped to be natural carnivores. Try catching a pig or even a chicken with your bare hands. Nor do we have carnivorous instincts. Humans are typically sickened by the sight and smell of blood and raw flesh and therefore pay others to do the killing. Unlike natural flesh-eaters, we cook and cover meat with all sorts of sauces and spices so that it never resembles its raw state. A natural carnivore like, for example, a cat, will salivate at the smell of raw fish/flesh. Now if man could delight in pouncing upon a bird, tearing its still-living limbs apart and sucking the warm blood, one could conclude that nature had given him a meat-eating instinct. But even the thought makes us shudder. On the other hand, a bunch of grapes, which will do nothing for a cat, will make our mouths water and even when not hungry, we enjoy eating fruit. Apart from abilities and instinct, let’s compare anatomical structures: 1.Since meat decays quickly, it needs to be digested and excreted before putrefactive bacteria poisons the bloodstream. Therefore carnivorous animals have a very short and simple digestive system with intestines only 3 times the length of the body. Non-carnivorous animals, on the other hand, do not eat rapidly decaying food, so their digestive systems are much longer and more convoluted with intestines as long as 10 to 12 times the length of the body for the slow digestion of plants and fruit. 2. In order to digest fibrous tissues and bones, carnivorous stomachs contain 20 times as much hydrochloric acid as those of non-carnivorous animals. 3.Since predators hunt at night and sleep during the day, they do not need sweat glands to cool their bodies therefore they do not perspire though the skin but rather through their tongues. Conversely, vegetarian animals like cows, horses, deer and so on spend much of their time in the sun grazing and browsing. Therefore they perspire freely through the skin to cool their bodies. 4.All natural meat-eaters have powerful jaws and pointed, elongated teeth to pierce tough hides and tear flesh. Since flesh is digested mostly in the stomach and intestines, it does not need to be chewed in the mouth to predigest, therefore they do not have any Molars (flat, back teeth) at all. A cat, for example, can hardly chew at all. By contrast, the digestion of plants, fruits and nuts starts in the mouth using the enzyme ptyalin contained in the saliva. The food has to be chewed and mixed well with ptyalin to be broken down so plant eaters have molar teeth which allows them to grind their food in a side to side motion as opposed to the exclusively up and down motion of carnivores. 5.Apart from stomach acids, even the saliva of carnivores is acidic and does not contain the enzyme ptyalin needed to pre-digest grain unlike plant-eaters who have well-developed salivary glands and alkaline saliva. 6. While carnivores drink water by lapping it up with their tongues, plant-eaters suck water up into their mouths. Human characteristics are in every way like plant-eaters and entirely unlike meat-eaters. Our digestive system is 12 times the length of our body, our skin has millions of pores through which we sweat, we do not have powerful jaws or sharp front teeth but flat back molar teeth, our saliva is alkaline and contains ptyalin, we drink water by suction like all other vegetarian animals. Physiologically, we are clearly not designed nor intended to be carnivores. What does this mean in terms of health. We have seen the disastrous effects of meat given to naturally vegetarian animals like cows. Similarly, studies have confirmed the terrible effects of a meat diet on plant-eaters.While natural carnivores have an almost unlimited capacity to handle saturated fats and cholesterol, if half a pound of animal fat is added daily to a rabbit’s diet, in just two months his blood vessels become caked with fat leading to the heart disease. Like the rabbit, our digestive system also is not designed to digest meat and therefore the more of it we eat, the more diseased we become. While the short funnel-like intestine of the carnivore ensures that meat is digested and excreted within a few hours, our long, convoluted 4 times longer intestine means that meat stays in our body for between 24 to 36 hours. Naturally it rots and putrefies releasing toxins that poison our bloodstream leading to a number of diseases including diabetes, gallstones and many forms of cancer including breast and prostrate cancer. The extra hydrochloric acid our stomachs are forced to manufacture to break down flesh and tissue leads to hypertension, constipation and strokes. Since carnivores sweat through their mouths, their bodies do not emit the strong smell of undigested meat. Because we sweat through the skin, our bodies give off a terrible odour after eating meat. Similarly our mouths smell because our teeth are not fashioned to eat meat and bits remain caught between them. Vegetarian bodies burdened with meat, put on weight and suffer from all the health risks associated with obesity. Findings that show that vegetarians are healthier, slimmer, longer-lived and better looking are not a coincidence. Humans have evolved for millions of years living on fruits, nuts, grains and vegetables. Throughout history, our anatomy has not changed. Therefore when we stay with the foods our bodies have been designed to process, our bodies can perform at their peak. Using the analogy of fuel, if you put diesel into a petrol car, it will damage the engine. Similarly if you put meat into a vegetarian system, you are going to, sooner or later, destroy it. - Maneka Gandhi -
Posted on: Sun, 07 Jul 2013 12:24:12 +0000
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